Crushing the competition at
December 2013's DRC Trials is
only the first stop in SCHAFT's
World Domination Tour ...

If you're looking for a suitable first name to give the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Robotics Challenge (DRC) Trials winner, it would have to be John SCHAFT (the detective from the Richard Roundtree 1970's movie) — the cool
robot platform that swept the field at the 2013 DRC Trials.

Echoing a toughness similar to its 1971 cinematic
namesake, the Japanese Team Schaft — a company recently
acquired by Google — was able to secure an almost perfect
score during the competition.

On December 20-21, 2013 at the Homestead-Miami, FL
Speedway racetrack, the DRC Trials brought 17 robot
building teams from the US, Japan, China, and South Korea
together for a competition
that would validate the
feasibility of employing
robots to aid humans in
dealing with the
aftermath of disasters.

Modeled after the 2011

Tohoku, Japan
earthquake and tsunami
that sent the Fukushima
Daiichi nuclear
power plant I
and II complexes
into level 7+
meltdowns, the DRC
Trials were hoping to
transform the field of
robotics into a cadre of
humanoid rescuers with
an ability to achieve task-level autonomy in a
climate of hazardous and degraded environmental
conditions, such as those found 30 km from the Fukushima
Ground Zero.

Ironically, at the time of the Fukushima disaster, Japan
lacked a force of robots that were capable of providing
even rudimentary assistance. At the conclusion of the
DRC Trials, however, the Tokyo-based SCHAFT Team
demonstrated superiority over any other robot in the world
in rendering disaster aid. This isn't to imply that the DRC
Trials entry robots were an advanced answer to the DARPA
call for robot first responders. Rather, in the words of
DARPA, SCHAFT and the other entries were more roughly
equivalent to a "two year old child" able to follow simple
commands like: "Clear the debris in front of you" or "Close
the valve." This is certainly a far cry from calling out, "Help,
me!" and receiving timely and helpful robotic assistance.

Typically, these robot rescuers are connected to a
human operator who literally guides the robot through each
search and recovery action. These tethered robots can be
both limiting and impractical in real world disaster scenarios
such as the 30 km disaster radius that surrounded
Fukushima.

Dependence on human intervention could be waning …
and soon. The 2014 finals — featuring a $2 million grand
prize — will be modified and combined into "a more
authentic mission for disaster response." Furthermore,
DARPA would like the ATLAS platform to be operated
"tether-less" for the finals. The date and location for the
finals has not yet been announced.

NOTE: Additional government assistance in organizing the DARPA
Robotics Challenge Trials came from the Air Force Research Laboratory
(AFRL), the Navy's SPAWAR Systems Center Atlantic, and the National
Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).